


One in a Million

by Dryad



Series: Hundreds and Thousands [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, PG, to say more would spoil it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 15:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dryad/pseuds/Dryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cafe, twenty years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One in a Million

**Author's Note:**

> My first Sherlock fic - be gentle, I'm frightened!

~*~

"Is this seat taken?" she asked, fiddling with the silver shell charm on her new grey leather purse.

He looked up from his crossword, blinked. "Hello."

"Hello, John."

He did that thing she couldn't remember the word for, where he smiled and frowned at the same time. 

She pulled out the lone chair and sat down, putting her purse on the table yet clutching it like a shield. He was still so handsome, though his hair was no longer all that brown. Thinner. Muscular. "How have you been?"

"Jane - "

"Eleanor," she interrupted. "I go by Eleanor, now."

"It's been a long time."

Eleanor nodded."Funny we should run into each other here, of all places."

He smiled again, but she could see he didn't have a clue as to what she was on about. Ah, well. It was going to be like that, then. "You're looking well. Are you still in the RAMC?"

"Invalided out," he muttered, motioning towards his shoulder. He glanced out the plate glass window, sat up straighter before turning to her again. With a short sigh, he said, "We need to get divorced."

"Oh," Eleanor rocked back in her seat and took a tremulous breath, surprised by the sour pang of horror in her belly. "Um, right."

"I'll contact you - " he eyed her sharply. "Watson?"

She nodded just the once, to make sure the tears didn't fall. Ridiculous, after all this time to be so affected. Mum had always said she was a sentimental fool, that John Watson was bound to break her heart one day.

'"Mark my words, Janey, he's too much man for the likes of you."

"Mum!" she'd cried, "You _hate_ him, you've _always_ hated him! Just because he doesn't fancy _you_ doesn't mean he -"

And then she was staring at her mum from the carpeted floor, her cheek burning from the slap, her neck aching from the force with which it had been delivered.

"You're nothing but a nice bit of fanny to him, and don't you forget it," Mum hissed, punctuating the words with stabs of her cigarette. She turned her attention back to the tv, then shook her head in frustration. "Now look what you've done, I missed Sharon's confession!"'

There was no way to stop sniffling, even though she wasn't crying.

"Oh for - " John pushed a serviette towards her. "Look, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. but don't you think it's long past time we did this? We were a couple of stupid kids, only sixteen, what did we know?"

"I liked it," she said, hating how her breath was hitching as she spoke. "John and Jane Watson," _I loved it_ , she wanted to say. _I thought we'd be together forever. I thought I'd have your babies (Sam, Lucy, Miranda and Hugh) and you would love me and I would love you and we would be happy_.

"I'm sorry, Janey, I really am," he shoved his chair back and stepped around the small table. After staring at her for a long moment he reached forward, touched her very gently on the shoulder. "You always were a nicer person than me. I hope you find somebody who deserves you."

Eleanor didn't have to watch him leave, there was only one path in and out of the little cafe and she was sitting right next to where the window fronted Butcher's Close. John didn't even glance at her as he walked past, his gaze too taken with a tall man in a long dark coat getting money out of the Royal Bank's line of cash machines.

And when they grinned at one another and left, John matching the tall man's stride with his own get-out-of-my- _fucking-way_ strut, for the first time Eleanor understood that he had never been hers, that her hopes and dreams had been for nought, that her mother had been, as always, right.

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Mofftiss (can you hear them cackling and stroking white cats?) has give us fen teasers for the 3rd series, one of which was 'wedding'. Now of course we all wonder, is John Watson getting married? Because I don't know about you all, but I certainly have ideas of the kind of woman who would tolerate John and Sherlock's tomfoolery and hijinks. 
> 
> But anyway, the question that occurred to me this morning was...what if John was already married? What if he'd been married, but separated, for so long that he'd just kind of forgotten about it? 
> 
> And what if, one day, they met again?


End file.
